The question for marketers working with the social influencers is often how can we integrate those opinion leaders into our marketing strategy. Just found a post with 3 tips that give some guideline on how to interact with influencers to increase your marketing output.

Social Media, well… let’s says strong relationships, will make our life last longer – the same way as if we stop smoking. This is the suggestion a long-time study by the Utah’s Brigham-Young University provides. I am glad I stopped smoking and instead using my time getting engaged in the social web discussion four years ago…

“Our social relationships are important not only to our quality of life, but also our longevity. Throughout human history, we have relied on others for survival such as protection and food, and despite modern advancements that may [help with] certain aspects of survival so that we can live more independently, it appears that our relationships nonetheless still impact odds of survival,” says Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad

“Our social relationships are important not only to our quality of life, but also our longevity. Throughout human history, we have relied on others for survival such as protection and food, and despite modern advancements that may [help with] certain aspects of survival so that we can live more independently, it appears that our relationships nonetheless still impact odds of survival,” Holt-Lunstad

Stats on web usage are always helpful for presentations and argumentation around getting engaged in the social web with a business. This little tool taking data from the Web Index might be of some help…

As we can read from the stats social media usage is growing in every country. England seems to be leading the crowd. This video by SimplyZetsy provides great stats on the UK grwoth…

Have you ever though on the impact of your logo and your web design? Why do they matter? If you haven’t, read Jennifer Schiff’s post on this topic and profit from great storytelling – and it is also a nice piece of content for enterprise brand managers.

PS: The story of the logo creation for The Strategy Web can be found here.

Every brand manager wants to know what is the ultimate Facebook fan page success code. The answer is, there is no blue print for it. It is driven by humanity and the humanization of brands. Now, Altimeter’s Jeremiah Owyang published 8 success factors that make your Facebook strategy more powerful. Interested on your views…

Though the football world cup is over, the spirit of the game is still alive. Managers took their learnings with them. And those football freaks that have to wait for the next season to be kicked off, they can enjoy this great commercial…

Every social media expert out there loves talking about The Cluetrain Manifesto and it’s impact on the future of our marketplaces. Now that the Cluetrain is more than 10 years old, I am trying to follow it’s creators in order to see how their views have changed. One of the founders Doc Searls -after Christopher Locke and david Weinberger some weeks ago– was writing last week about the main drivers of the open marketplace transaction, conversation and relationship. “Marketing is now all gaga over “social media” as well, in part because many believe that Cluetrain was all about “social” markets”, he says, and I have to admit sometimes I do see it that way, too. Having agreed with him, I do have to add: Technology changes quickly but it is difficult to change a market situation – no matter if social or open. Why? In the first place, it is driven by human beings. And it takes them a long time to adapt new culture. Haven’t we seen this 10-15 years ago when all this internet hype started? In some way, we seem to be on this learning curve again. Don’t you agree?

There are many valuable Twitter tool lists. Vadim Lavrusik created one of the (in my eyes) best Twitter tools top 20 lists that will help you improve your Twitter experience.

Adbands has become a classic event in the last years. And the commercial which was produced for the event tells us why. No more to say…

TGIF! And to celebrate this week, I keep this end of the update very short. A company called Kam Lock, a chinese restaurant, understands how to put the whole social web euphoria upside down. Enjoy your weekends!

It is always interesting to see how companies are trying to sell their products and services with advertisements referring to two essential factors: time and money. Most of their marketeers can imagine the impact and effect of them on customers. The proof was often missing (also for me). After some years of searching, I found a study that states a relevant difference in which way companies are persuading customers to buy their products and services using these arguments to explain them the benefitial features.

A team at Stanford Graduate School of Business did some experiments offering lemonade in a park. They advertised the lemonade with two different creatives and switched them every ten minutes. One ad mentioned the time benefit “Spend a little time and enjoy C & D’s lemonade” and the other the money benefit “Spend a little money and enjoy C & D’s lemonade”.

What happened? The time offer got twice as many people buying the lemonade with the time benefit compared to the money one. And there is even more impact in the time factor. All people were allowed to pay whatever they wanted for the drinks. It showed that people with the time benefit bought more drinks and paid 80 cents more for the lemonade.

In order to test whether this is just valid for cheap products like FMCG goods- another test was set up with the sample principle for iPads. And surprisingly enough, the results were largely similar. The customers felt more engaged with products offering positive time benefits than money features.

Spot On!
Mentioning time-positive features rather than money benefits in ad campaigns can make products more valuable and interesting to customers. And researchers claim that there is no difference whether you persuade your customers offline or online with these features. There is one exception when you are selling “prestigious” products. If people are materialistic, this theory does not work.

“But sales of the featured product—Red Zone After Hours Body Wash—aren’t necessarily tracking with that consumer appeal: In the 52 weeks ended June 13, sales of the brand have dropped 7 percent according to SymphonyIRI. (That amount excludes those rung up at Walmart.) P&G execs were not available to comment.”

Have you ever heard of the X-treme shopper? Well, the amopunt of people that fit in this personalized power shoppers category increases. A new study by GFK research shows that already 31% of Americans find themselves in this category. They use all emerging technologies and information resources available in order to take control of their shopping and purchase experience.

“By mixing and matching information and shopping resources to meet their specific needs, consumers are now continuously creating unique pathways to purchase. This presents an unprecedented challenge for marketers who must take special care to ensure their various touchpoints work together seamlessly to help guide XTreme shoppers on their quest for the best values.”

Mike Kassab, senior vice president of Innovation and director of the Future Buy study, GFK

Did you know that the world population according to the United Nations is 6.8 billion people? And how many have a mobile phone? A new study by Ericsson says 5 billion…!

And what would people do if Facebook was closed tomorrow? A recent study by Andreas Weigend, former chief scientist of Amazon at Stanford, suggests that 40% of respondents would backup photos and 38.7% said they would backup contacts.

A new study by Jobvite states that 73.3% of responding companies turn to social networks to recruit new employees. The reason is obvious: Success! Almost 60% reported that they have successfully hired a new employee through social network sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

The key findings of the study for companies that recruit through social networks …

– 80% used LinkedIn
– 55% useed Facebook
– 45% used Twitter

Especially the numbers of LinkedIn show a significant success number when addressing new recruits via social networking sites…

– On LinkedIn 90% that recruit through social networks have found candidates there.
– Facebook: 27.5% that recruit through social networks have found candidates there.
– Twitter: 14.2% that recruit through social networks have found candidates there.

As companies are successful in recruiting through the social web (58,1%), the spending of half of the employers are planned to increase, while spending on traditional job boards and employee recruiting firms will decrease.

Spot On!
If you compare the numbers with the same study in 2009, it shows that the market for good new recruits seems to become more challenging. In 2009, 66% of the companies found a new employee via social networks, 8% less than this year. Still both parts of the recruitment chain can win with their social web engagement. Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter have a significant impact on company’s HR strategy and recruiting success. Nevertheless, it has to be said that not only companies might benefit. Employees that take care of their social networking profiles make themselves heard in other HR departments.

The FIFA WorldCup is over. The matches are played. Spain is the new World Champion. The team really has deserved to get the Copa del Mundo (…not only because they won against Germany.. ;-)… ). Now that the tournament is over I thought about it and asked myself, what were my management take-aways from the last five weeks…for me.

1. The team is the star. Worldcup 2010 was like Enterprise 2.0: Teams with top stars fail (Rooney, Ronaldo, Ribery, Kaka, etc…), real teamwork wins.

2. A scarf seems to be a team managers fashion guarantee for success. Though, managers who wear a scarf built world-class teams, it’s no guarantee to make a world-class team win the cup (Jogi Löw, Bert van Marwijk, etc.).

3. Managers need to have the courage to change long-serving systems in favor of integrating young players techniques, visions and ideas (Mexico, Germany, Uruguay, etc.). Nevertheless, the accompany of “old stars” as motivators is a great back-up…

4. Management stand-still is a killer. The market-competition for the “on-paper” leading countries is increasing. Globalization, new training opportunities and new markets offer countries great opportunities to become a challenging competitor for the old market champions (England, France, Italy, Brasil).

5. It’s all about communication, authority needs to be defined anew. There is no right or wrong in leading until the communication is not aligned with the culture and mentality of the players (France, France, France,…).

What are your key-findings, take-aways from a management perspective. Share them with us… And by the way: If it is serious fun you would like to share, just go ahead…